Heena Sharma Blog

China-based ByteDance, the parent company of popular short video application TikTok , will set up a data centre in India, becoming one of the first social media companies to do so in the country, the company said in a statement shared exclusively with Business Standard. "India is one of our strongest markets and we are happy to be part of the mainframe of Digital India in 15 languages. Since the launch of our platforms in India, we have stored the data of our Indian users at industry-leading third party data centres in the US and Singapore...We now believe the time has come to take the next big leap," the statement read. The company has set an internal target of 6-18 months to set up the data centre, Business Standard has learnt. The plan is part of the $1 billion ByteDance has recently committed to the Indian market over the next three years. The move is also significant because of the Indian government's ongoing focus on data localisation, as well as the incr...

India's ban on popular Chinese video app TikTok is resulting in "financial losses" of up to $500,000 a day for its developer, Beijing Bytedance Technology Co, and has put more than 250 jobs at risk, the company said in a court filing seen by Reuters. TikTok allows users to create and share short videos with special effects and is one of the world's most popular apps. It has been downloaded by nearly 300 million users so far in India, out of more than 1 billion downloads globally, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. Earlier this month, an Indian state court ordered the federal government to prohibit its downloads, saying the app was encouraging pornography. Acting upon instructions from the federal IT ministry, Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google last week removed TikTok from their India app stores. The developments have dealt a blow to the India growth plans of Bytedance, which is backed by Japan's SoftBank Group Corp and by private equity. ...

An Indian ban on downloading TikTok , one of the world's most popular mobile applications, has heightened industry worries that technology companies could now face increased scrutiny and regulatory challenges in one of their most important markets. TikTok, which allows users to create and share videos with special effects, has become a sensation in India, where it has been downloaded by nearly 300 million users so far, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower, out of more than 1 billion installs globally. Its runaway popularity has attracted criticism from some politicians, however, in a largely conservative society that can have a low boiling point for even moderately racy content. In the case of TikTok, 15-second dance clips and memes dominate the platform, although some videos do show youngsters, some scantily clad, lip-syncing and grooving to popular tunes. Local media have also reported several accidental deaths when users attempted to make videos with knives and gu...